Comments | tebing: way to insult my intelligence

tebing

way to insult my intelligence

Jun 21, 2007 12:44

So I'm reading this incredibly dry and pedantic academic text for my research, and one of the chapters starts off with the following sentence:

The critical mass is a powerful metaphor and convenient phrase often used in a deus ex machina1 manner to solve theoretical discussions.

And here's the footnote:

1Deus ex machina (latin [sic] for god from ( Read more... )

grad-school, dissertation

Comments 4

rainswolf June 21 2007, 18:11:19 UTC

Hmm, while I didn't know what deux ex machina was until studying for the GREs.

Isn't the benefit of a book structured like that is you can just read the first few paragraphs of each chapter?

tebing June 24 2007, 02:41:57 UTC

It seems to be geared for an advanced (i.e. graduate-level) audience, so I can't imagine that very many readers would not know the phrase. But even so, they could always look it up1 themselves, couldn't they? That's what I would do if I saw some funny italicized Latin phrase that I didn't know. No need for the author to explain it to me in such a hand-holding fashion. Even if this were a textbook intended for undergrads, it would still be striking a rather arrogant tone towards the reader.

1To look something up, literally "to gaze upward at (something)", refers to the process of consulting a reference work such as a dictionary or encyclopedia for the intended meaning(s) and/or connotation(s) of a given word or phrase. There, see how annoying this is? ;)

alsoname June 21 2007, 20:43:35 UTC

I was going to say that maybe a dumb editor put that in there and not the author. But then you described the author's writing style and wow! Your description made me laugh. Out loud, even. I have to deal with that all the time from standardized-test takers. The thought of a "professional" who hasn't progressed beyond that is sort of depressing.

tebing June 24 2007, 02:54:45 UTC

I guess I shouldn't make too much fun of that kind of writing style, since I'm doing something similar in structuring the drafts of my own dissertation chapters (although not quite as obnoxiously, I hope). But then I'm also planning on editing out as much of that stuff as possible for the final version. As long as my committee members don't end up contemplating seppuku1 while reading it, I'm happy.

1Seppuku refers to the ancient Japanese practice of....ah, fuck it. It's ritual suicide that was done by dishonored samurais, desperate women, and Yukio Mishima to exit their lives in a spectacularly gory fashion. Go look it up. :P